Coupe de France 1939/40

The competition for the Coupe de France in the 1939/40 season was the 23rd playout of the French football cup for men's teams. This year 778 clubs registered.

Last year's winner Racing Club de Paris was able to defend its title this year; this was already Racing's third cup win. However, the final opponent Olympique Marseille had already received the trophy five times, the last time in 1938 .

The event was strongly influenced by the political circumstances at which the war broke out . In September 1939 there was also mobilization in France , from which football players were not excluded. This affected the game operations of the French championship so that the first division was divided into three regional groups with a total of 21 teams. Travel routes could be shortened and the number of games reduced.

The Coupe de France was also badly affected by the framework conditions; seldom did a team play two consecutive matches in an identical line-up. Again and again, released players came to the stadium immediately before kick-off - or even afterwards - from their garrison location. This also explains some surprisingly high defeats even by first division clubs (see, for example, the semi-finals ), although they were usually able to cope with such failures better than small clubs. RC Paris, for example, had a total of 24 players; only the only 20-year-old René Roulier competed in all of the cup encounters. The competition, however, was still carried out nationwide and in early May 1940, immediately before the German invasion of France ( Western campaign, "Fall Rot" ) - on June 14, less than six weeks after the final, the Wehrmacht occupied Paris -, regularly concluded. The cup competitions from 1939 to 1945 and their winners are therefore, unlike the so-called “war championships”, to this day also as official titles.

After completing the qualification rounds organized by the regional subdivisions of the regional association FFF , the first division clubs intervened in the competition from the thirty-second finals. A cup commission set all matches for the thirty-second and sixteenth-finals; the privilege that first division clubs could not meet in the first round was lifted from this season. Up to the round of 16, home rights were also established; In the quarter-finals and semi-finals, the games took place in a neutral place, the final traditionally in Paris. From the round of 16, the pairings were drawn freely; however, the FFF had deviated from the lottery procedure in one case and set the pairing between Marseille and Nice, which led to considerable resentment among these clubs. If an encounter ended in a draw after extra time, one or more replay matches were played.

Thirty-second finals

Games on 17th, repeat games on December 24, 1939; Since there was no official national championship this year , with the exception of the first division ( marked with D1 ), the league membership of the clubs is not stated.

AC Amiens - SC Fives 4: 5 AS Monaco - AS Cannes D1 1: 2 US Boulogne D1 - Olympique Dunkerque 7-1 OC Châteaudun - Arago Sport Orléans 3-2 AS Cherbourg - SM Caen 1: 2 US Valenciennes - Excelsior Roubaix D1 5: 1 Stade de l'Est - Red Star Olympique D1 2-1 SO Charenton - CA Paris D1 2: 3 Racing Paris D1 - Stade Français Paris 3-0 JS Puteaux - CA du 14 e Arrondissement 3: 0 Stade Reims D1 - SC Choisy-le-Roi 4-0 La Tour d'Auvergne Rennes - FC Lorient 7: 1 FC Rouen D1 - US Vésinet 1-0 RC Agathois Agde - FC Sète D1 2:10 US Belfort 1-2 FC Sochaux CO Cholet - Stade Rennes UC 2-0

AS Troyes - WP du 16 e arrondissement 1: 1 a.d., 1: 0 Stade Compiègne - Boulogne-Billancourt 2-0 AS Moulins - ASA Vauzelles 4-2 Olympique Alès D1 - SO Montpellier D1 0-3 Olympique Marseille D1 - Olympique Nîmes D1 5-1 FCM Aubervilliers - FEC Levallois 4: 5 Girondins Bordeaux D1 - Saint-Jean d'Angély 7: 1 RC Arras D1 - RC Lens D1 0: 0 n.v., 3: 7 Racing Strasbourg - SVA Ruelle 4-2 (a) ES Juvisy - US Asnières 4-0 Le Havre AC D1 - FC Dieppe 3-1 FC Antibes D1 - OGC Nice D1 1: 5 AS Trouville-Deauville - US Quevilly 0-0 aet , 1-0 US Annemasse - Lyon OU 5: 1 Toulouse FC D1 - Bordeaux-Bouscat FC 1: 3 AS Saint-Étienne D1 - US Rouet 3-1

^(a)Many players from the Strasbourg league team left Alsace immediately after the outbreak of war and found accommodation in Périgueux in central France . Racing played this home game there too.

Round of 16

Games on January 7th and 14th, repeat games on January 14th and February 4th, 1940

SC Fives - JS Puteaux 9-0 US Boulogne D1 - Stade de l'Est 6: 3 OC Châteaudun - Racing Paris D1 2: 3 SM Caen - FC Rouen D1 1: 9 CA Paris D1 - AS Trouville-Deauville 9: 0 FC Sochaux - US Annemasse 1: 1 n.V., 4: 1 CO Cholet - La Tour d'Auvergne Rennes 3: 2 Stade Compiègne - Stade Reims D1 2-1

AS Moulins - AS Saint-Étienne D1 1:10 SO Montpellier D1 - Olympique Marseille D1 0: 2 FEC Levallois - AS Troyes 3: 4 RC Lens D1 - US Valenciennes 2-0 Racing Strasbourg - Girondins Bordeaux D1 3: 2 (b) Le Havre AC D1 - ES Juvisy 4-1 OGC Nice D1 - AS Cannes D1 3-2 FC Bordeaux-Bouscat - FC Sète D1 1: 1 aet, 0: 5

^(b)Many players from the Strasbourg league team left Alsace immediately after the outbreak of war and found accommodation in Périgueux in central France . Racing played this home game there too.

Round of 16

Games on February 4th, 11th and 18th, 1940

SC Fives - Le Havre AC D1 1-0 Racing Paris D1 - CO Cholet 8: 0 FC Rouen D1 - US Boulogne D1 5-2 FC Sochaux - AS Saint-Étienne D1 4-2

Olympique Marseille D1 - OGC Nice D1 3-2 AS Troyes - CA Paris D1 0:10 RC Lens D1 - Stade Compiègne 3: 1 FC Sète D1 - Racing Strasbourg 8-1

Quarter finals

Games on March 3, 1940, in a neutral place

Racing Paris D1 - FC Sochaux 3-1 FC Rouen D1 - SC Fives 2-1

Olympique Marseille D1 - FC Sète D1 1-0 RC Lens D1 - CA Paris D1 2: 1 n.a.

Semifinals

Games on April 7, 1940, in a neutral place

Racing Paris D1 - FC Rouen D1 8: 4

Olympique Marseille D1 - RC Lens D1 9: 1

final

Game on May 5, 1940 in the Prinzenparkstadion in Paris in front of 25,969 spectators

• Racing Paris - Olympique Marseille 2: 1 (1: 1)

Team lineups

Substitutions were not possible at the time.

Racing Paris: Rudi Hiden - Maurice Dupuis , Raoul Diagne - Ramón Zabalo , August Jordan , Christian Rouellé - Jules Mathé , Heinrich Hiltl , René Roulier , Oscar Heisserer , Edmund Weiskopf
Trainer: E. Roux

Olympique Marseille: Jacques Delachet - Joseph Gonzalès , Camille Malvy - Jean Bastien , Max Conchy , Raymond Durand - Georges Dard , Wilhelm Heiss , Emmanuel Aznar , József Eisenhoffer , Friedrich Donnenfeld
Trainer: József Eisenhoffer

Referee: Charles Delasalle (Calais)

Gates

0: 1 Aznar (16th)
1: 1 Roulier (25th)
2: 1 Mathé (70th)

Special occurrences

The final took place before the lowest number of spectators since 1929 ; a year earlier, twice as many (over 52,000) visitors had paid entry for the final. Those who were able to come witnessed a premiere: for the first time in a cup final, the referee was sent off. Racings Weiskopf, an ex-Olympique player, and Max Conchy fought a very intense duel full of nicknames ; both teams had to finish the final with ten.

The problems mentioned at the beginning of getting soldiers released for a game only applied to this final - unlike in the semifinals - in a more well-known case: Racing's “ striker memorial ” Émile Veinante was not allowed to leave his troop unit. On the other hand, Olympique's German striker "Willy" Heiss, a foreign legionary in Algeria until 1938 , naturalized soldier in the French army from the outbreak of war, received special leave. Another prominent player at Marseille, on the other hand, missed the final for reasons of performance: Ahmed Ben Bella , a good two decades later Algeria's first president, only played in one league game for OM this season. Paris' long-time club chairman Jean Bernard-Lévy saw this final - in uniform - as a spectator in the stadium; eleven days later he fell at the front.

See also

• Division 1 1939/40

literature

• Hubert Beaudet: La Coupe de France. Ses vainqueurs, ses surprises. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2003, ISBN 2-84253-958-3 .
• L'Équipe, Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007, ISBN 978-2-915535-62-4 .
• Alain Pécheral: La grande histoire de l'OM. Des origines à nos jours. Ed. Prolongations, o. O. 2007, ISBN 978-2-916400-07-5 .

Web links

• This season the Coupe de France on the side of the FFF (French)

Remarks

1. ↑ Beaudet, pp. 44-46.
2. ↑ according to the association's website  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ L'Équipe, Ejnès, pp. 332/333 and 356.
4. ↑ Pécheral, p. 111.
5. ↑ Heiss was taken prisoner of war soon after the final, played again for a club in German-occupied Strasbourg and was again a soldier (this time in the Wehrmacht ), who was soon transferred to the Africa Corps in Tunisia. - Pécheral, pp. 106-108.
6. ↑ Operations for OM 1939/40
7. ^ At Günter Rohrbacher-List: Jean Bernard-Lévy, the “football crazy” from Paris. In: Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling (Hrsg.): Star of David and leather ball. The history of the Jews in German and international football. Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89533-407-3 , p. 429, there is a photo of Lévys among his players immediately after this final.